Price of organic pork? Anything?

Farmers Guardian - UK

Regulars | 7 November, 2008

Paul Peacock brings us a delicious pork pie with a huge difference, but worries about his supply of organic rare breed pork.

One of the mainstays of small pork producers has been organic production. It sort of started a few years ago when a number of producers started to keep rare breed pigs, get them to the abattoir and then ship them out to pre-sourced customers who bought the meat at mates' rates, butchered at the abat-toir and whizzed through the post in ice- filled polystyrene boxes.

One industrious producer fitted their farm with webcams and you could go online and watch your fut-ure bacon sandwich walk around, fall asleep, suckle from mummy and generally dig up the universe.

One hilarious episode occurred when a member of the public rang in to say that she could see the pigs, Oxford Sandy and Blacks, running off into the sunset having shorted the electric fence with a feeding tray.

Pigs' rarity value

But then mates' rates might turn pigs over, you might be able to buy weaners and fatten them on, but can you actually make any money out of them? It seems not, and there are fundamental reasons why you can't.

One of the problems is the 'have a go' nature of small farm enterprises: It is a trend that transcends the whole ethos of farming. It is easier, and possibly more lucrative, to sell pig arcs, feeders - almost anything for pigs - than the pigs themselves.

The same paradigm exists in the British beekeeping circles. Anywhere in the world, you will find people selling bees, Australians sell queens, New Zealanders sell colonies - all over the world. Here in the UK, we sell bits of wood, hives in flat packs, almost anything other than bees, which now change hands at three times their value because of the rarity.

So you can buy equipment for pigs, but this is a world away from getting rare breed pigs reared and sold - and make a profit.

One organic pig producer, who doesn't want to be named, cannot make enough money from his small production. “It's great when you sell 20 half-pigs and you get nearly £4,000 in at £100 a half, but when you add everything up, it simply doesn't pay”.

He recounted a list of farmers leaving the organic pig business.

The bigger problem is that it's one thing to sell a few pigs at mates' rates and think there is a market out there for your product, it's quite a different one to actually find customers prepared to pay a premium for your pork.

If so-called conventional pork is on the supermarket shelves cheaper than it really should be, in the long run, how will the small organic pig producer make any money, especially when times and purses are stretched? And when costs for the breeder have soared - particularly grain, which tripled in price before falling back.

Time to box clever

The internet has helped somewhat. The British Pig Association (BPA) keeps a directory on its website where it puts suppliers with small herds of free range and organic pigs in touch with buyers. Mostly these producers by-pass the market system altogether and their sales can be described as almost exclusively farmgate - albeit a virtual one.

Julie Dronfield, who keeps a herd of Gloucester Old Spots at Penpethick Farm, near Boscastle, in Cornwall, is a member of the BPA and still has found it difficult to sell her pork.

It is true that the internet represents a huge resource of potential customers, who can shop from their living rooms or even from work, but it is another thing altogether actually getting them to visit your site.

Making the internet work requires a lot of skills, frequently skills that the pig farmer hasn't got. How many shoppers wanting to buy their Sunday roast would think of going to the BPA website to find a supplier of pork?

With this in mind, Julie boxed clever and made an internet resource open to all that is a little like the completely familiar eBay, used by millions. Her website is a small farmers' eBay where anyone can register to sell their produce and people can buy by bidding or buying out and paying in a way familiar to them as they have done so many times on eBay.

Jimmy Doherty - from Jimmy's Farm - sells pork, as we all know. He has shocked some (by carrying pigs around) and endeared many by being quite genuine in his love for pork. He told me some time ago that his pork was as expensive as it could possibly be sold at, but even at top price he could not stop having to reduce his herd size because of the price of feed.

So, for him, another way of boxing clever was to add value to his pork by making food.

Of course, curing ham and making sausages and sandwiches bring with them expense - more expense. And regulations and paperwork, and time and trial runs, add more and more expense. But all is not doom and gloom, as many people who are getting out of organic rare breed pork, there are just as many with plenty of mates looking for a good rate getting into it. And who knows, one of them might hit on the key to making a profit, and in the meantime, there'll be arcs and feeders and young weaners to sell.

MORE INFORMATION

For further details, visit: Julie Dronfield's website at www.fieldsoffood.co.uk or the British Pig Association on www.britishpigs.org.uk

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